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18 November 2012

My Life is One Big Laundry List Right Now

(c) iStock

Phew and a whew! Once Halloween has passed, usually the Crazy Busy Holiday Season begins and takes over my life.

This year will be no exception. Normally I curl up in a ball and cry from November to January (yay seasonal mood crap!) but I'm going to have to work through that because I have SO MUCH TO DO in so little time.

The good news is, most of my holiday shopping is done. I started Christmas shopping in September because I know me, and I know how bad I am with money. Being unable to find work, and with graduate school consuming my life, I've had to live off of school refund checks in order to pay bills. Around this time last year I had completely run out of money and felt really crappy for not doing birthday and Christmas presents for a lot of people. So while I could still afford to, I bought presents early (they're already gift-wrapped and sitting in my closet!). I also booked my hotel for Ohayocon and paid for my admission in September as well. And, since my life seems to be nothing but patterns lately, I am once again out of money, but now I know at least I have something to give for the holiday season.

Speaking of Ohayocon, NOVEMBER 30th IS THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT PANELS (so far they've received over 220!) The good news is I've submitted all three panels back in September. I had hoped to hear something from programming, but at the same time, I feel like I probably won't hear anything 'til mid or the end of December whether or not I've been accepted. In the meantime, I need to create the three panel presentations and redo my writing tool-kits. I want to do this early so I can feel more than ready for the con in January...but at the same time, I have other things on my plate. Now I don't know if I should wait until I'm a confirmed panelist to do the presentations or still proceed with making them now. The thing is, I have to consider my school obligations.

Dealing with school schedules and financial aid has been kind of a nightmare. I found out on registration day that not only do I not qualify for aid this term, but I won't next term also. So I've had to register for even more classes than I'm required to take just so I can keep my loans. I also found out that a required module will be occurring at the January residency--the same residency I was told not to come to because my final residency is the one in which I graduate. I feel like I've blown up everyone's inboxes trying to deal with all this stuff. But at last I've figured out my schedule and financial aid. Here's what's coming up:

(January-April):

--Readings in the Genre

--Readings in the Genre

--Writing About Popular Fiction

--BOOK DUE IN FULL IN APRIL

(June-November):

--Capstone Writing Project

--Final Residency and Graduation

--Readings in the Genre (post-graduation)

If you've followed this website since its inception, I've done quite a bit of book reviews and essays for school here. That has leveled off because this term, I only took a term writing project so I could concentrate on the book. And that explains why the content on the site's been a bit anemic, with almost no reviews and mostly me posting artwork or rambling incoherently about anime. Well, come January, it's going to change and I'll be posting a ridiculous amount of reviews because I'm overloaded with Readings in the Genre courses until I graduate. Whoa!

What sucks is that I hoped to have completed my book before the start of the term. The plan was, because I thought I was only taking two classes, that I would aggressively look for work full time during this term. I worked full-time the first year of graduate school, and it was tough, but I handled it well when it was just Readings in the Genre classes. But now that I'm up to three classes again, and two of them require constant reading, that puts a huge damper on things. I thought that since the book was now due in April that I could take my time on it again, but I can't do the book + three classes + look for full-time work.

So I HAVE to finish the book before the next term starts. I'm pretty sure if I don't, the stress will kill me. I don't think I can handle devoting time to the novel when I'll be reading and writing essays every waking second of my life. And because my course load is so heavy, I don't think I can look for a job like I wished to. Which means I'll have to figure out how to stretch my loans out again. Fun.

Do you see my dilemma now? This is what I have to do before January 18th:

--Finish the book

--Revise the book

--Polish the book

--The Alchemy of FMA presentation

--Give Good Spec! (revised) presentation

--Fanfic into Fiction presentation

-- Writers Toolkits (2)

--Transmutation Circle Kits

On top of that, I don't know what I was thinking with my involvement with Deviant Art. Well, wait a minute. I kind of do.

The thing is, this term was rough for me and the novel. I produced a lot of pages that I'll just have to cut. And I'm so tired of the book that I think I actually hate it...which is not the best place to be in if I want to write more of it.

When things have gotten stressful and shitty, I've hopped over to Deviant Art. Not just for the purpose of getting Lily & Andresh artwork. I've actually started to relearn what it's like to do social media (I deleted my Facebook and Myspace in 2007 and haven't been back. Good riddance). Which also means in a weird way I've been social again with complete strangers. And I love dA for that, because it cheers me up when I want to throw my manuscript into the fire.

On top of that, completing a drawing provides so much more gratification for me, because it doesn't take me too long, and I get a more instantaneous sense of accomplishment. I just don't feel the same way about writing this book, so that's another reason why I've probably spent all this time making pictures. I've spent over two years on the book and it's not done; but I can spend a few hours on a drawing and it'll be up later that day. Even though writing a book is in fact a bigger accomplishment to me, I hope you can understand why I find artwork so appealing.

I got myself into some projects on dA that will also need to be finished ASAP. I'm trying to work through them now while I rewrite the beginning of the novel for the 500th time. I've made a lot of art for other people, as well as done art trades and gift exchanges, and participated in (and even won) some contests. It's been a great experience, and I'm getting better at drawing every day (coloring and inking not so much), but I need to wrap things up fast so I can do all of those other projects before January 18th.

At this point, I think all I can say is, please wish me luck. I've got so much to do in so little time! And I hope you'll be excited when my website suddenly starts pumping out articles regularly again.